Khae Haskell was walking down a street in Brooklyn, N.Y., and saw a car whose engine apparently had caught on fire outside a subway station. That caught Mx. Haskell’s eye — and imagination.   

“The engine and front part were charred, but the rest was intact,” Mx. Haskell said as their exhibit was being installed in the Mercy Gallery on February 3. “I was really fascinated by what this looked like, and there were all these really cool intricate forms within the charred engine, but the fact the rest looked OK was interesting to me. Beauty and decay. And I said, ‘I should open my eyes, not be on my phone, pay attention to my surroundings.’”  

Mx. Haskell’s show, From Rot to Ravish, is in the Eugene and Sue Mercy Jr. Gallery through April 11. Mx. Haskell will return to campus as part of the Adolf and Virginia Dehn Visiting Artist program February 24–28 and will present their work at a community artist talk on February 27. On exhibit concurrently in the Barnes and Wilde galleries is portrait work and artwork in glass, ceramics, drawing, and graphic design, all by students.   

From Rot to Ravish, Mx. Haskell writes in a promo for the show, was “enacted as site-specific installation comprised of several mixed media collages. This exhibition travels through multiple forms and techniques of drawing, shown within layers and sprinkled throughout the gallery.”  

Some pieces on the walls are large, some are small, some are hanging in large mobiles. 

From Rot to Ravish is a continuation of the Decomposed series, for which Mx. Haskell draws what many people might consider unwanted or undesired parts of nature. When Mx. Haskell is on the streets of Brooklyn, walking to and from the studio, all eyes are on the surroundings. “The city has these little treasures; if you’re paying attention you can find them,” Mx. Haskell said.  

As the saying goes, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.   

“There is interesting botanical growth, mushrooms growing on trees, anything from decomposing birds and rats to weird fruit someone left behind that is rotting,” Mx. Haskell said. “I do these intricate drawings in pen and ink and recycle them into my work. So what you see [in this exhibition in Mercy Gallery] is a site-specific installation of the drawings done in different ways. … I’m drawing traditionally with pen, but I’m also drawing with forms on the wall and neon lights.”  

Mx. Haskell said almost everything in this installation is recycled, except the hardware to hang the art and some new neon glass. Much of the packing materials for the show are from recycled art-handling materials. Excess resin gets put back into work or given to other artists. “All of the acrylic panels were donated to me by other artists, and all of the tiny shards of panels were scraps cut from my breaking down of the acrylic, so I am not wasting anything,” Mx. Haskell said. “Even my tiny scraps I’m giving to other artists, and they are making work with it. The mylar surfaces with the drawings are recycled from two semesters of grad school. I basically cut these long drawings I had into tiny collage pieces and redrew on them to put into the installation.”  

In their artist statement, Mx. Haskell said, “My making begins with a natural treasure hunt of the world around me. I often become a watcher, an observer, sometimes feeling like a voyeuristic outsider searching for the inspiration that presents itself throughout my path of travel.”  

Eyes wide open.